The End of Scars: Scientists Discovered How to Regenerate Human Skin

IN BRIEF

A team of scientists from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found a way to get skin to regenerate using fat cells.

According to the researchers, the secret is to regenerate hair follicles first – the fat will regenerate in response to the signals from those follicles

AS IF IT NEVER HAPPENED

The human body can do many impressive things. Despite years of evolution honing its capability to carry out the complicated mechanisms needed to ensure our survival, the body has not refined the process of healing skin. Sure, wounds inflicted on the body’s largest organ can heal, but we are left with scar tissue.

A team of scientists from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania however, believe they have found a way to do the previously impossible – allow skin to regenerate using fat cells.

Image Credit: Penn Medicine

Adipocytes, the type of skin that regenerates after we get superficial cuts, is filled with fat cells that allow it to blend easily to the rest of your skin as it heals. Scar tissue (made up cells called myofibroblasts), which occurs as our skin heals from deep cuts, looks very different because it contains no fat cells or hair follicles.

“The findings show we have a window of opportunity after wounding to influence the tissue to regenerate rather than scar,” said the study’s lead author Maksim Plikus, PhD, an assistant professor of Developmental and Cell Biology at the University of California, Irvine.

George Cotsarelis, chair of the Department of Dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania, explains,”the secret is to regenerate hair follicles first. After that, the fat will regenerate in response to the signals from those follicles.”

WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

The scientists just had to figure out where the signals were coming from. They eventually identified a factor called Bone Morphogenetic Protein which instructs the myofibroblasts to become fat. “Typically, myofibroblasts were thought to be incapable of becoming a different type of cell,” Cotsarelis said. “But our work shows we have the ability to influence these cells, and that they can be efficiently and stably converted into adipocytes.”

While the discovery is indeed impressive, it should be noted that the experiment is still in its early stages and serves only to demonstrate proof of concept.

Currently the process has only been proven to work in mice and human skin samples. Achieving hair follicle growth in a wound attached to a living human might prove to be more difficult. But should science find a way to do this, we may not have to worry about wounds leaving scars ever again.

Outside of obvious applications to prevent scarring, adipocyte loss is also a known side-effect of other medical conditions, including HIV treatments. The aging process leads to natural loss of these cells as well, which causes permanent wrinkling of the skin. These findings could pave the way for a safer, and possibly permanent, way to address these cosmetic concerns.

“Many patients with heart problems – such as heart disease or angina – may need to undergo cardiac surgery in order to restore or improve blood flow. But a new study suggests that the procedure may offer so much more; stem cells in fat discarded during cardiac surgery could be injected back into the patient’s heart to further improve its function.” – Beyond the Dish ‘Heart Function Improved by Injecting Discarded Surgery Fat’

So it looks like Tyler Durden (from Fight Club) was right… kind of. There is a better use for that unwanted, liposuctioned belly fat than just being toxic waste. Scientists have discovered that the belly fat that many of us have (that we really don’t want or need) can be used to improve the functionality of our hearts. This procedure would require liposuction pre-cardiac-surgery, however, scientists are looking into the possibility of using similar fat that builds up around the heart that, conveniently, is removed during the surgery anyway. Wam-Bam-Thank you ma’am

This seems only too fitting, as many young people experiencing cardiac distress may be experiencing it because they have a good amount of this fat to spare. Well, fret no more, because what doesn’t kill us does make us stronger.

All jokes aside this does seem like the circle of life modernized. The fat that could be killing us can be used to save us once it has already begun to kill us. Make sense? No? Well think of it this way… While surgeons are inside of someone’s chest trying to save them from a heart attack, they are also removing excess fat from around the heart– which is part of the reason this person is in this situation to begin with. In the near future doctors may be able to, in one surgery, remove this fat, isolate the stem cells, and inject them back into the heart to have a positive effect post surgery. This could increase blood flow out of the left ventricle and result in “greater ventricular movement”. So the fat that is hurting our heart can now be removed and the stem cells in it put back with basically the opposite effect it had originally. But in the mean time, it seems very likely that we will be able to save some of that liposuctioned fat and use it during cardiac surgery to improve heart function.

A piece of a three-dimensional bone structure obtained from the own adipose stem cells of a patient is seen at Brussels’ Saint Luc Hospital January 14, 2014. Belgian medical researchers have succeeded in repairing bones using stem cells from fatty tissue, with a new technique they believe could become a benchmark for treating a range of bone disorders. REUTERS

BRUSSELS — Belgian medical researchers have succeeded in repairing bones using stem cells from fatty tissue, with a new technique they believe could become a benchmark for treating a range of bone disorders.

The team at the Saint Luc university clinic hospital in Brussels have treated 11 patients, eight of them children, with fractures or bone defects that their bodies could not repair, and a spin-off is seeking investors to commercialize the discovery.

Doctors have for years harvested stem cells from bone marrow at the top of the pelvis and injected them back into the body to repair bone.

The ground-breaking technique of Saint Luc’s centre for tissue and cellular therapy is to remove a sugar cube sized piece of fatty tissue from the patient, a less invasive process than pushing a needle into the pelvis and with a stem cell concentration they say is some 500 times higher.

The stem cells are then isolated and used to grow bone in the laboratory. Unlike some technologies, they are also not attached to a solid and separate ‘scaffold’.

“Normally you transplant only cells and you cross your fingers that it functions,” the centre’s coordinator Denis Dufrane told Reuters television.

His work has been published in Biomaterials journal and was presented at an annual meeting of the International Federation for Adipose Therapeutics and Science (IFATS) in New York in November.

Belgian Professor Denis Defrane, coordinator of the centre of tissue and cellular therapy of Brussels’ Saint Luc Hospital, shows how a hole in the tibia of a patient suffering from a disease was treated on an x-ray, in Belgium January 14, 2014.

REUTERS

Bone Formation

“It is complete bone tissue that we recreate in the bottle and therefore when we do transplants in a bone defect or a bone hole…you have a higher chance of bone formation.”

The new material in a lab dish resembles more plasticine than bone, but can be molded to fill a fracture, rather like a dentist’s filling in a tooth, hardening in the body.

Some of those treated have included people recovering from tumors that had to be removed from bones. One 13-year-old boy, with a fracture and disorder that rendered him unable to repair bone, could resume sports within 14 months of treatment.

“Our hope is to propose this technology directly in emergency rooms to reconstitute bones when you have a trauma or something like that,” Dufrane said.

A spin-off founded last year called Novadip Biosciences will seek to commercialize the treatment, initially to allow spinal fusion among elderly people with degenerated discs.

It may also seek to create a bank of bone tissue from donors rather than the patients themselves.

IFATS president Marco Helder, based at Amsterdam’s VU university medical centre, said the novelty was the lack of solid scaffold.

“It is interesting and it is new, but it will have limitations regarding load-bearing capacity and, as with other implants, it will need to connect to the blood vessels of the body rapidly to avoid dying off,” he said, adding:

“Any foreign object can cause irritation and problems, so the fact that this is just host tissue would be an advantage.”

LONDON (Reuters) – Most Russians overestimate how healthy they are and many run high health risks by smoking, abusing alcohol, being obese and failing to take enough exercise, according to a report published on Tuesday. | Full Article

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“In another blow to diet drugs, Canadian researchers are reporting a link between Roche’s Xenical and an increase in kidney injuries. Tapping into healthcare databases from the province of Ontario, they found that 0.5 percent of new orlistat users were hospitalized for kidney problems in the year before starting on the drug. Over the next year, that number jumped to 2 percent.”

“Roche did not return calls for comments in time for this article.”

Dr. Donald E. Greydanus, a pediatrician at Michigan State University, who was not involved in the study but has written on obesity treatments [said:] “There is no safe panacea drug that works and that has no side effects,” he told Reuters Health in an email.

While 2% seems low to you and me, consider that this is kidney damage from a diet drug AND a 400% increase over typical incidents.

Scientists at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus discover new fat cell

The fat cell may pose health threat

AURORA, Colo. (Aug. 2, 2010) — As if fat weren’t troublesome enough, a research team at the University of Colorado School of Medicine has discovered a new type of fat cell with potentially harmful characteristics.

The new fat cells arise from stem cells in the bone marrow that travel through the blood stream to fat tissue. They are termed bone marrow progenitor-derived adipocytes. The discovery also revealed that male and female subjects accumulate the new fat cells differently. The research also may help to explain the link between types of obesity and heart disease and other illnesses.

The findings by Dwight J. Klemm, PhD, and Susan M. Majka, PhD, are reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America.

According to Majka, the research “may identify ways to prevent those adverse effects as people age or gain weight.”

The body stores energy in fat – either white or brown cells. But over time too much fat can cause health issues. Previously, the researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus had traced certain fat cells back to bone marrow. It appeared likely that a type of stem cell (the hematopoietic cell) was getting into the blood stream and settling somewhere else.

The latest research, which used laboratory mice but applies to humans, demonstrates that is the case. It shows that these stem cells travel through the blood stream into fat tissue and tend to accumulate in deep abdominal fat, primarily of females. This new type of fat may affect the body’s ability to dispose of fats and sugars, and produces inflammatory problems. The results also help explain why fat in different parts of the body behaves differently. The research team now is detailing the health threats these fat cells cause and looking for ways to halt the formation and accumulation of harmful fat.

Faculty at the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine work to advance science and improve care. These faculty members include physicians, educators and scientists at University of Colorado Hospital, The Children’s Hospital, Denver Health, National Jewish Health, and the Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Degrees offered by the School of Medicine include doctor of medicine, doctor of physical therapy, and masters of physician assistant studies. The School is located on the Anschutz Medical Campus, one of four campuses in the University of Colorado system. For additional news and information, please visit the UC Denver newsroom online.

The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus is a model for the type of interdisciplinary research in translational medicine that will take basic discovery “from the bench to the bedside.”

The International Federation of Adipose Therapeutics and Science (IFATS) is holding their 2007 world medical and research conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, October 18-20. The conference will present advancements in research of Adipose derived stem cells This will be the last IFATS conference to be held in the United States in the near future, as the conference moves to France next year and South Korea in 2009.

Multidisciplinary investigators from over 30 countries will attend the three-day conference, hosted by Keith L. March, MD, PhD, current IFATS president, Professor of Medicine, Physiology, and Biomedical Engineering, Indiana University School of Medicine.

This is the only organization that focuses on the understanding and treatment of disease by probing into the characteristics of adipose tissue and its rich repository of stem cells. This meeting will be more exciting than ever before, with the field of adipose stem cells having demonstrated a truly remarkable growth in interest over the last year. This is based on a progressive recognition of the host of possibilities for addressing diseases that affect very many people, including those with heart disease, problems with circulation to the legs, stroke, neurological disorders, diabetes, obesity, hemophilia, autoimmune diseases, kidney disease, bone and joint problems, and others.

More than 150 researchers from over 30 countries will join with representatives from more than 15 companies that are actively working in the area of adipose stem cells. Keynote lectures from scientists who have made truly seminal contributions in the translational science of other important types of adult stem cells will greatly enrich the 2007 conference. Dr. Anthony Atala (leader in the field of amniotic-fluid derived stem cells). Dr. Hal Broxmeyer (discover of umbilical cord-blood derived stem cells), and Dr. Katarina LeBlanc (leader in the field of bone-marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells) will lecture in their respective disciplines. Biosketches of each of these speakers is available on the IFATS website: http://www.ifats.org. A number of new clinical trials using or planning the use of adipose stem cells in patients will be discussed by the investigators.

SAN DIEGO, May 07, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — The first clinical trial of adipose (fat) tissue-derived stem and regenerative cells for the treatment of heart attacks showed a substantial reduction in the size of injury to the heart, an improvement in the amount of blood supply to the heart muscle, and a corresponding functional improvement in the amount of blood the heart can pump…

Stem Cells Reshape Breasts After Cancer

Dec. 17, 2007 (San Antonio) — In a medical first, researchers have used stem cells to help reshape the breasts of women who have undergone a lumpectomy to remove a breast tumor.

In a small study, nearly four-fifths of women who got injections of stem cells derived from their own fat tissue were satisfied with the cosmetic results.

During a lumpectomy, surgeons take out only the tumor and surrounding tissue, sparing the remainder of the breast. Radiation is typically given afterward to kill any missed cancer cells.

While the goal is to preserve as much of the breast as possible, the procedures can leave a woman with a scarred, misshapen, and cratered breast.

Currently, there’s not much doctors can offer these women, says Eric Daniels, MD, a surgeon at Cytori Therapeutics. Cytori developed the device used in the stem cell treatment but was not involved in the new study.

“The defect is too small to make her a candidate for the breast implants [offered to women who have a breast removed during a mastectomy],” he says.

Doctors can try rearranging the breast tissue that is left or modifying the other breast to match the flawed one, says Sameer Patel, MD, a reconstructive surgeon at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia that was not involved with the work.

But this involves surgery and can leave additional scars. “It’s far from ideal,” he tells WebMD.

Stem Cells Overcome Problems With Fat Implants

Patel says that injections of fat tissue have been tried, but the fat is often reabsorbed or dies.

That happens, he says, primarily because of a poor blood supply between the implanted fat cells and the breast cells.

That’s where stem cells — those miraculous master cells that have the potential to form many other types of cells — come in.

While the research is still early, it is thought that the stem cells develop into the cells needed to form new blood vessels.

“The stem cells likely stimulate the breast tissue to make new blood vessels,” Daniels says. The new blood vessels supply oxygen and nourishment to the implanted cells, keeping the graft alive.

It’s possible, but unlikely, that the procedure actually builds new fat tissue, he says.

Stem Cell Injections Increase Breast Thickness

The new study involved 21 women who had undergone a lumpectomy. Using liposuction, fat was removed from their abdomens, hips, thighs, or lower backs. Half was set aside as the main implant material. The rest of the fat was processed so that only stem cells and other types of tissue capable of regeneration were left behind.

The stem cell juice was then combined with the reserved fat and injected into the area of the breast defect. The procedure takes about three hours. Six months after treatment, 79% of 19 women surveyed were satisfied with the results, says researcher Keizo Sugimachi, MD, president of Kyushu Central Hospital in Fukuoka, Japan. He presented the findings here at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

In addition, the improvement in breast tissue thickness that was observed at one month persisted at six months. That’s how the researchers know it is working, Daniels says. If the fat tissue hadn’t been supercharged, a portion probably would have died off during the six-month period, he tells WebMD.

“The work is in its infancy but shows a lot of promise,” Patel says. Cytori Therapeutics plans to undertake two additional studies of the technique in Europe and Japan next year.

Stem cell therapy is quietly entering areas where it provides improved or alternative therapeutic results. Cytori is showing continually improved study and anecdotal results in breast reconstruction with adipose stem cells, a result which implicitly includes the creation of new blood vessels. If positive results continue, breast reconstruction is going to be an excellent market for Cytori, one already generating the lion’s share of its current revenues, and one in which it is clearly establishing a leadership position.